How To Deal With Getting Fired?

How many of us have been terminated, downsized, or even just got fired from a job? If you have ever experienced the shock of being fired and trying to figure out what to do, hopefully this article will help.

On Wednesday May 19th, I was getting ready for my normal Wednesday morning sales meeting with the CEO of the company who I reported to. Just before the meeting I received a video conference invitation, which was strange because he normally just calls me. As I logged in I noticed the VP of Operations was in the meeting as well. The CEO said “There he is”, then went right into it “Today is your last day here, we are terminating you effective immediately.” Can you say I was shocked. I was going through an entire wave of emotions. Thinking “What the F*ck!”

Tip #1 “Shut The Front Door!” - Do not say anything, take a deep breath. This will prevent you from saying anything that you will regret later. This is where people go into a primal response “Fight, Flight or Freeze”. My old pattern use to be Fight! I use to go for the throat and try to hurt the person who I felt just hurt me. Old high school pattern I learned from growing up in some tough high schools. If you could not stick up for yourself, you would be taken advantage of or even worse. Through a lot of personal development work, as well as therapy, I learned it was the way I dealt with feeling hurt, scared, attacked...etc. I would attack to feel safe and secure. This is where I learned to keep quiet, breath and collect myself. Do not emotionally respond no matter how much I want to, how good it would make me feel in the moment, I learned I would regret it later.

If and when you can collect yourself see if you can find out why? I will be honest with you, in most situations which I have been on the other side of the table letting someone go. Normally HR has some very formal responses to make sure there are no wrongful dismissal grievances...etc. So you might not get what you are looking for. Which I know is hard to hear because we want to understand why and get closure.

I asked the question and received “We have decided to go a different direction”. I know most of us would be thinking “What does that even mean?”, “Why couldn’t I come in that direction as well?”, “What did I do wrong that you don’t want me to work with you anymore?” ..etc. The hardest thing you will have to do is resist asking all these questions. The reason is most of the times they wouldn’t be able to answer because it could get them into trouble. So they will most likely just stick to the same answers, which will be frustrating and will not get you what you are looking for.

Listen to the directions they are going to give for the next steps to do ie what they need back, do they need you to sign anything...etc. You might even have a exit interview with some companies. I would give yourself at least one week before scheduling that before doing it. I will explain near the end of this article why I recommend to wait.

Now I was sitting there after the meeting, with all my emotions, in shock thinking “What the F*ck!, what am I going to do now?” This is where a wave of challenges/negative thoughts will start flooding in. How are am I going to pay my bills? What am I going to do now for work? How am I going to find a job? “Those Son of a Bitches...”<enter your questions here>... Yes you will go through a wave of thoughts good as well as negative ones.

Here is where the fun starts as the stages of grief kick in:

1. Denial - This is the initial shock phase where you really don’t understand what just happened. You can’t believe this is happening to you at the worst possible time. It’s ok to go through this phase, be compassionate with yourself and reach out to talk to people you trust. Do not go through this alone.
2. Anger - Now this is an interesting phase especially with social media. Through this phase you are going to feel the urge to lash out. To tell them how you truly feel, how they wronged you in so many way(s) and where they can go. With social media you will feel like you want to tell the world because everyone needs to know and the best way is to get on your keyboard and start typing. NOPE! If you feel this urge to do this go grab a physical notebook and/or lots of pieces of paper, as well as pencil not a pen. The reason for the pencil is because wood can be grounding for people while they are writing. Also the reason for the paper is I want you to write everything out. Tell them where to go, how they wronged you, swear, scream on the paper, everything, do not stop. If you feel there is more you want to say keep writing. Keep writing until you have nothing else to say. Then walk away and come back to it later. Do this for a few rounds until you get everything out. This will help you get through the anger stage. Once you feel you are done and there is no more anger, I want you to burn those pages, seriously. Rip them out of your notebook or if they are just loose pieces of paper I want you to burn them. This will be healing to see them go up in flames. Remember a Phoenix rises from it’s ashes.
3. Bargaining - Next you will go through a phase of trying to see if you can bargain your way back in. “if I only did...”, “ What if I did..”trying to figure out what you did wrong and how can you fix this. In this phase have friends and family around you who can ground you as you go through this. They can ask you good questions and keep you from going through this stage to long. Questions like “How would that work?”, “Walk me through that process?” The more logically they help you be the faster you will go through this phase. The reason is you will be thinking more emotionally and trying to use emotion to fix the situation. When you keep thinking logically it will become clearer to understand that it’s over. Which will bring you into the next phase.
4. Depression - Now this phase is one to be careful with. Depression can be very quiet and not recognizable at first because the person just might not say anything. I like to use the duck in water analogy here. On the surface everything might seem ok, but underneath their emotions and thoughts are going a mile a minute. If you know someone who is going through this make sure you support them. Here are some tips to help with depression:

Tip #2 Go for a walk in the sun for at least 20 to 30 minutes a day. Vitamin D from the sun will help with depression. Also walking will help open up the body and relax your muscles, as well release emotions. This will help loosen up the neck muscles were you will be holding in the tension of communication. If you are holding back on what you want to say your neck will get tight. The chest will be the area you will hold in the hurt and emotional pain, how much you loved the job and now emotional hurt because of the loss. Opening up your chest as you walk will help release the tension and yes you might even cry, which is ok. The abdominal areas will be anger, frustration, resentment...etc. Walking will help release these emotions and not have them manifest in your body. If you feel the urge to swear, yell..etc. Go to a big park or go walk on a trail with a lot of trees. Yell at the Trees until it is all out of your system. Trust me the trees can take it ;-) Also, make sure you talk to people, as many trusted people you can talk to. Be honest and tell them how you are feeling no matter how vulnerable it is. Your mental health is so important to take care of. Reach out to family and friends to help you. There are a lot of great people out there who will support you and just listen.

5. Acceptance - This is the one where you come to accept what has happened. It might not be pleasant to say it’s over and acknowledge it, trust me I know. Now you will accept that this is your current situation and will want to figure out what are your next steps, the “holy shit what do I due now?” Phase.

Ok so what do you do, really?

The good thing is now we have given you space to feel your emotion and go through your stages. Please take your time through the above and be compassionate with yourself. This will be unique to everyone and will take some time.

Now it’s time to be selfish, think about your career and what do you want. I know this might not feel like the right time. I remember one concept I learned when doing Holistic Lifestyle Coaching is “I, We and All”. Which goes in this exact order:

I - You have to look after yourself first. If you are not taking care of yourself mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually you will not be at your best. You will not have the abundance in all these areas so that you can feel great. Then be able to help the people in your life. Which leads me to...

We- This is your family, friends, kids and significant other. These are the people most closest to you that you help. Once you have looked after yourself then you can help the “We”.

All - This is everyone else in you life. People you work with, acquaintances...etc. The people you feel who are great in your life and you enjoy being around. These people you help after you can help yourself, the “We” and then the “All”.

I share this with you because when you follow this concept you realize when you are not taking care of yourself how everything else gets effected.

So now what? Here are some questions I would start with:

1) What do you want to do exactly?

2) Do you have exactly what you need to do for that job? If not, what can you do to get it?

3) Is there anyone you can talk to that can help you?

I know this was a long article and to be honest it was more for me then you. It was a reminder of what I need to do to move on from getting “terminated”.

As promised, if you do all these steps and feel better, now you can do an exit interview with this in mind. At this point hopefully you feel better and not so angry/frustrated. You can provide constructive feedback that will help the organization and hopefully things you learned from the experience. Remember no one benefits if you are just lashing out.

If you’ve read this far, let me know what you think by commenting below...